Field
The present invention relates to an apparatus and method to provide an encrypted account credential from a first device to a second device.
Relevant Background
Users of computing devices typically have many different accounts for accessing online services and applications. These accounts typically require account credentials, such as, a username and a password. For security reasons, users are recommended to use different usernames and different passwords for different accounts. Therefore, it is quite common for a user to have many unique usernames and passwords.
Remembering and managing all of these usernames and passwords by a user can be very difficult. Also, when creating new passwords that need to be remembered, it is quite common for a user to choose a simple password based on a small subset of available characters. This may lead to weak passwords.
Moreover, users are accessing these accounts from a wide range of different computing devices (e.g., both mobile devices and non-mobile devices). For example, these different computing devices may include: home computers, work computers, mobile phones, mobile devices, tablets, etc. Therefore, users need to have access to their account credentials at different locations with different devices.
Unfortunately, storing all of these account details in human memory by a user, as previously mentioned, is very difficult. Further, storing these details on a written sheet of paper or in a device that is kept by the user, enables mobility, but is not secure and is prone to theft which can result in undesired access to a user's accounts.